In Colum McCann’s previous novels Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic, he favoured the historical sweep, moving in periscopic fashion between lives of characters real and imagined, fuelled by the Whitmanesque idea of interconnectedness. His latest book, Thirteen Ways of Looking, a novella and three short stories, is an altogether quieter offering. McCann is still playing with the enjambment of past and present, and readers will still feel like they’re “caught in the chorus of light and dark,” but these hypnotic new stories seem to delve deeper into the personal, move with a sense of haunting.
In the summer of 2014, McCann witnessed a scene of domestic abuse on a street in Connecticut. He came to the aid of the woman, but was later attacked by the woman’s husband and severely injured. These stories, written before and after the event, all contain kernels of violence, but rather than glorify the moment of violence itself, McCann chooses to linger on the aftermath.
Excerpts from a conversation:
Do you believe in circularity? Your stories and novels have a tremendous way of reaching out to enfold themselves. I always feel when I’m reading you that I will be led safely back to the place where we started, but with several diversions and illuminations along the way.
Ah, riverrun, riverrun. Maybe it's an Irish trait. I recognise circularity in some of my work but with certain escape hatches in various parts of the circle so that the diversions and digressions can break out and breathe. In other words I don't want to be too consciously circular. I'd rather my novels have some jagged edges so that the reader can make his or her own shape from it.
“We cannot un-punch, we cannot un-kick, we cannot un-rape.” This was part of your victim’s statement when you were assaulted last year in Connecticut. Does writing or reading about violence help with understanding how violence is experienced?
Absolutely. Writing is a wonderful form of non-violent assertion of what violence can do to us. We can experience the pain and suffering of others but we do not have to wear the scars. This is non-violent empathy at its very best. Nobody should ever come out of a good book unchanged.
Did you feel that in writing about violence you were able to negate or re-contextualise the violence you were subjected to?
I was able to reclaim my own territory. I took back the ground that got knocked from under my feet. This is not just writing or story-telling as catharsis, it is story-telling as absolute necessity. I got a chance to punch back, non-violently.
Poetry informs a large part of the titular story in this book. You take your cues from Wallace Stevens of course, but there are also echoes of Heaney and Muldoon. Why is poetry important to you, and what do you think a poem can do that a story can’t?
From the age of 12, I was reading Dylan Thomas. I discovered Gerard Manley Hopkins when I was about 13. Poetry has been vital for me. And I probably read more poetry than fiction. I've only written one poem however and it was pretty awful. I was far too conscious of rhythm. I like to bring poetry into the fiction. I'd like to think that the books are long poems. But poetry is not a better form. It's just a different form. I don't privilege poetry over, say, playwriting, or fiction, or journalism even. The good word needs to be properly placed in any available form. That's all that matters.
How important is memory to you as a writer? InThirteen Ways, we have stories where memories are faltering but also being reconstructed. How does memory measure up against imagination?
I say in one of my earlier books that memory is three-quarters imagination and the rest is most likely lies.
How do you decide that you’re going to write in the voice of a 68-year-old Romani woman, or Rudolf Nureyev, or Philippe Petit, or any of the real life people you’ve incorporated into your fiction? Is the process of building those characters different from the imaginary characters? Is there a different level of authorial responsibility involved? Is there such a thing as authorial responsibility?
Yes an author has to be responsible, especially when he's a middle-aged, middle-class male who wants to write in voices that are light years beyond his immediate experience. There are issues of cultural arrogance and gender arrogance and economic arrogance at play. The author must delve deep and learn how to portray difference as deeply as possible and be true at the same time. Whenever I create a character other than a white Irish male, I always make sure that I consult as many experts as possible. I have dozens of people read the work for authenticity. I am just as responsible to my fictional characters as I am to those who are ‘real’.
“The world has a complicated geography,” your write, particularly the“I” countries — Ireland, Iran, Iraq, Israel — to which we could add India as well. What is it about these places of conflict that interests you as a writer?
Conflict is at the core of all good story-telling. What we want, and what has been taken away. When lives are at the heart of the question, then the stakes are high. In these ‘I’ countries we come up against the pure coalface of human emotion.
Joyce famously said that it was no accident that almost all Irish writers leave the country because Ireland eats her writers the way a sow eats her farrow. Has that been your experience?
Not at all. Devouring Ireland's dead and gone, it's with Sam Beckett in the grave.
Could you talk about how you negotiate time in your novels and stories? To me it seemsthecentral thing.
Certainly time is the central element in Thirteen Ways of Looking . The time that was , and the time that is , both of them helixed around one another. And then there's the time yet to come. I think a good writer uses time like a musician uses his saxophone. You know when and where to blow the note, whether triumphantly or plaintively, and you create a rhythm that changes the world, if even only temporarily.
You write in your author’s note — “every word we write is autobiographical, perhaps most especially when we attempt to avoid the autobiographical.” Why is it that the word autobiographical can sometimes make readers of fiction so suspicious?
Because when we write about ourselves we're almost guaranteed to lie. Autobiographies are filled with lies. Memory has been shaped and re-shaped. But when we avoid autobiography — at least direct autobiography — we are much more likely to tell the truth about the human spirit, or to reveal something profoundly true about ourselves.
And finally: Are you a watcher of television shows? If so, which ones, and are you a binger?
Not really but I did binge on House of Cards.
